The Home Office will not make design changes to its error-prone electronic visa (eVisa) system, despite tens of thousands being affected by software glitches and data issues, the UK government has said in response to a Lords digital ID inquiry.
In June 2025, the Lords Home Affairs Committee (HAC) launched an inquiry into new digital forms of identification, to scrutinise how the government intended to approach the design and implementation of its now-scrapped national digital ID system.
While the majority of the inquiry focused on the government’s digital ID efforts, it also partly looked at how another form of digital ID, the Home Office’s eVisa system, has been operating in practice since paper documents were phased out at the end of 2024.
Unlike the old physical documents, the Home Office’s eVisa system does not provide a stable record of an individual’s immigration status. Instead, the status is generated in real time every time someone needs to prove it – including for digital right to work checks – and is determined by trawling dozens of disparate databases to source the relevant information.
In a report published on 20 May, the HAC concluded the government, in designing a new digital ID system, “should learn from the errors that have affected the eVisa system”, adding that “in particular, the government should consider whether eVisas should be transferred into the digital ID system, so that in the future all UK residents can access a stable, tokenised digital form of proof of right to work.”
The report further detailed the “fundamentally flawed” nature of the eVisa system, highlighting criticism from expert witnesses that it would be better to use a more stable, “tokenised” form of ID that people can store on their personal devices, rather than the current, online-only system that generates someone’s status in real-time whenever they log in to their UKVI account.
However, it also noted that, prior to the government scrapping its digital ID plans, its consultation document stated “the digital ID will primarily be stored as a digital document on someone’s device”.
When it comes to the eVisa system, however, the government has been steadfast in its refusal to use an alternative system that would allow people to more reliably prove their immigration status.
While migrant support and digital rights groups have directly proposed alternatives to the Home Office (including the use of QR code systems), the department’s eVisa policy team insisted as far back as December 2023 that it will not “compromise on the real-time aspect” of the e-Visa checks, as “any check of an individual’s immigration status must be done in real time to reflect the current immigration status held” on its systems.
Now, in a response to the HAC published on 18 September, the government has doubled down, confirming that “the eVisa system will continue to provide digital evidence of immigration status”, noting “the majority of eVisas work successfully”, with tens of millions of digital status checks showing the verification “works effectively at scale”.
It added: “For the small proportion of users who have experienced problems, we have extensive support in place to ensure issues can be reported easily and resolved quickly, with alternative arrangements in place to ensure status can be verified pending any issues being resolved.”
Commenting on the department’s refusal to change course on the design of its eVisa system, Monique Hawkins, head of policy and advocacy and acting CEO at The3Million, said: “It is really disappointing that the Home Office continues to deny eVisa holders a stable form of proof of status that can be easily shown to others without needing to be tech-savvy and connected to the internet.
“For more than five years now, we have highlighted the many problems with the current system. The Home Office itself acknowledged in 2023 that offline proof of status would help in travel scenarios, and those who are digitally excluded, yet has done nothing about it.
“We regularly hear from people stranded abroad who are unable to convince an airline of their right to travel,” she said. “It’s all very well when the automated airline systems work. But when they don’t, people are stranded, with their proof held somewhere they can’t reach.”
Computer Weekly contacted the Home Office about the design of its eVisa system, and why it has so far refused to move to a more stable token-based system rather than the current error-prone system that relies on real-time database checks.
“Over 11 million eVisas have been issued and the vast majority of people with an eVisa use them without any problems,” a Home Office spokesperson said. “We continue to improve the service, while providing support for the very small proportion of users who encounter difficulties.”
Tens of thousands affected
Given that millions of people are now required to prove their immigration status via the system, even a 1% error rate would mean tens of thousands of people are affected at the very least.
Although the Home Office is yet to publish comprehensive information about the exact scale of software errors with its eVisa system (despite previously committing to publishing that data in Spring 2026), what little evidence is already available indeed suggests that tens of thousands have already been affected.
While the Home Office did publish some data in July 2026 on the number of eVisa errors that were corrected for each month from September 2025 to May 2026 (a total of 64,778), The3Million noted this data is drawn from the online web form people use to report a problem with their eVisa, and only includes errors that were corrected each month.
“The reports that we received from people cover a wider range of issues – not only errors with eVisa details, but all problems accessing, proving or updating status,” said The3Million in its latest quarterly analysis of eVisa problems.
“The transparency on the data for eVisa records is welcome from the Home Office, however, it still lacks a comprehensive understanding of all reports made by eVisa holders rather than only problems that were resolved.”
Computer Weekly has also previously heard from those affected by eVisa software and data issues that – contrary to the Home Office’s claim that there is “extensive support in place” – the “inordinate amount of stress” associated with not being able to reliably prove their immigration status was made worse by a lack of responsiveness and help from the department.
Despite the different circumstances of people’s immigration status and the specific problems each has had with the eVisa system, all of those Computer Weekly spoke with at the time described the Home Office as “extremely unhelpful” throughout the entire process.
They added that, when they do eventually manage to get in touch with Home Office staff, they are met with confusion and receive different responses from different people.
